“For fuck's sake!”
He got to his feet as quickly as he could and began sprinting again, all the while cursing at how far away they had parked.
***
Chris rushed into the living room, where Claire Marie was tending to a battered and bruised Jim. Ben and Petra were holding each other for comfort. When they saw Chris' face, they knew that events had taken yet another turn.
“Pete's bringing the van to the door, so we need all of you guys ready to go,” he said.
“He's what? He went out there with those things?” Ben asked.
“They're not out there right now.”
“What do you mean they're not out there? Why?”
“Sister Sarah lured them away.”
“What? How?”
“They're currently chasing her. Look we need to be ready to go.”
“Chasing her? What the fuck? Where is she now?”
“I'm sure she's fine. We'll pick her up when we're on the road. Look, I'll tell you all about it when we get out of this bloody house. We have to go now!”
Claire Marie looked up at Chris, who was clearly getting frustrated.
“Jim is hurt. I don't think we can move him.”
Jim sat up, grimacing as he did so. He looked at Claire and smiled through gritted and slightly bloody teeth.
“I'll be fine, Claire. To be honest, I just want to get the fuck out of this village.” He looked up at Chris. “So lead the way, Mr Idol.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
Pete ran as fast as he could towards the van, making sure to keep his wits about him, looking all around for potential threats. It seemed as if the plan was working. He hoped that Sarah was still giving those evil bastards the slip. He made a mental note to ask her for some cardio tips later. He was knackered.
He was breathing heavy when he reached the van, and he was about to unlock the door when a lone figure appeared at the end of the street. A small, evil looking boy. The same boy, in fact, that threatened to attack him earlier in the night. The boy glanced across to him and let out a guttural roar.
“YYYOOOOOUUUUU!!” he cried, in a voice deep and filled with knives.
“Oh bugger,” Pete said, turning his attention to the door. Thankfully it unlocked quickly enough, and he jumped into the driver’s seat and shut the door. He locked it immediately, and then launched himself over the passenger’s side to lock that door too. Somewhere in the back, a frantic budgie squawked.
Then there came an even worse sound. The sounds of more people coming his way. Fast. He had no time to lose. He looked up, and saw the windscreen was misted up. It was one of the many quirks that their little van had. She was a reliable old girl, truth be told, but whenever the weather took a turn for the worse she had a habit of misting up. That usually meant they had to run the engine and crank the heater up full blast for a good five to ten minutes before they could see enough to drive safely.
“Shit,” Pete grunted.
He turned the key in the ignition.
The engine failed to start.
“Shit!” he exclaimed again.
Suddenly, the van was rocked by a thump on its bonnet. He could barely see through the windscreen but he recognised the shape of the Demon-boy.
“Where do you think you're going, human?” the boy cried, slamming his fist down on the windscreen. It stayed in place, but the plexiglass crunched where his hand had connected with it.
“SHIT!” Pete shouted, gunning the engine again.
Again, it didn't start.
“Not now you fucker. Not now!” he cursed.
The van rocked again as more demonic villagers arrived. They hammered at the vehicle and began rocking it as best they could. Pete couldn’t see how many there were, but he guessed from the voices that there were at least four of them. Five if you included the little shit on the bonnet.
Once more he tried the engine, and this time it tried valiantly to start. The boy continued to pound on the glass, and even if it had demisted, it was becoming increasingly difficult to see out through. If the engine didn't start this time, Pete knew he was in trouble.
He turned the key again.
The engine made its stuttering attempt to kick into life.
It coughed once or twice.
And then came to life.
The sound of the engine humming and revving to life brought Pete almost out of his seat in happiness.
“YES! YOU BEAUTY!”
He was reaching for the gear stick when the driver’s side window erupted inwards, and then clawed hands were reaching for his throat.
He recoiled, shifting so that his assailant couldn't rip his Adam’s apple out like it wanted to. The hands scrabbled to get a decent hold on him, but only found his jacket. He reached over to the glove box to reach inside, but the hands grasping his jacket held him in place, desperate to pull him out of the driver’s seat.
If he didn’t act fast they would.
He spotted the small, cigarette lighter button sitting just beneath the stereo, and pressed it down. He planted his feet down firmly, jamming one on the accelerator. The van revved manically, and as he struggled with his assailant he briefly noticed the rev counter on the dashboard threaten to go off the chart.
“You can’t get rid of me this time. This time I'm going to rip your fucking heart out!” the assailant screeched, the voice so close that Pete felt his ears ringing after it spoke. Pete thrashed his elbows at his attacker. He felt blows connect, and heard a muffled crunch, followed by a yelp. The hands relaxed their grip. It was marginal, but enough for Pete to wrestle himself free enough to lean down to the cigarette lighter.
The old woman thrust her head into the van, and Pete finally got a good look at her. He wished he hadn't. Her skin was sickly, and covered in dark blisters. Her hair was thinning, which only meant that the bumps and boils underneath were even more visible. She wore thick-rimmed glasses, clearly meant for people in need of high magnification when reading. These glasses, however, were cracked in the middle and half falling from her broken and mangled nose, which was now covered in dark, almost black, blood. Despite her disgusting appearance, she had in her mouth a set of perfect teeth.
“I said I'd get you, Peter!” she wailed in a voice that wasn't hers. “Do you remember?!”
Pete thrust his arm up, catching the old lady under the chin. Her jaw snapped up and, as it did so, her dentures popped out of her mouth. They hit Pete in the face and he almost retched at the smell of them. The old lady’s gummy mouth snapped open and shut, and her eyes burned with pure hatred. Pete yanked the cigarette lighter from its socket and brought it up to the monstrous old lady’s face. She opened her mouth in protest as the glowing hot metal came towards her, so instead of burning her face, Pete dropped the lighter into her mouth instead.
She wailed and tumbled away from the smashed window. When she fell out of his sight, Pete saw that more of the villagers were on their way. Looking up, he saw that the boy had turned the windscreen to a crunchy mess and was beginning to reach in.
He shuffled in his seat to correct himself, cranked the van into reverse, and checked the back window to see if anything was behind him. There was, of course. More monsters smashing their hands against the van. They were all over it. The roof began to buckle and dent. He yanked the handbrake off and the tyres of the van screeched as the van tried to pull away. Whatever was behind the van was trying desperately to keep it in place.
“Oh, come on!” Pete cried.
He looked up and saw that the boy’s face was now partially visible in the windscreen, and to his side more villagers had almost reached him. The passenger side window smashed inward. Pete closed his eyes just as whoever was holding the van in place let go. He didn't know if they had slipped, run out of energy, or simply lost concentration. It didn't matter.
The van darted backwards so suddenly that whoever was behind it disappeared under the wheels. Pete bumped up and down in his seat as something r
olled under the van and succumbed to its weight. He turned the wheel and looked back out the window, trying as best he could to direct the van towards the house.
The rear windows were a mess of a spiderweb cracks, which made it difficult to see out. As he turned, Pete knew that he had lost some of his 'passengers' as they tumbled to the tarmac. However, two of them were more stubborn. He could still hear the creature on the roof, screaming in defiance. He was also painfully aware of the demonic little boy, reaching in, his oddly elongated arm desperate to choke the life out of him.
Pete leaned back, kept his eyes locked on the house, and tried desperately to keep the van steady. It moved from side to side as he fought to correct it, and after some deft driving and immense concentration, he managed to align the van with the front door.
He pressed his foot to the accelerator and the van rushed forwards.
***
Chris and his merry band of survivors had watched Pete from a safe distance as he struggled to get the van started. He felt sick when he saw the villagers swarm over the white vehicle, and fought the urge to rush out to help his brother. It would have meant certain death for him if he had, and he trusted Pete to get himself out of there. He always had an uncanny knack of doing that, ever since they were kids.
And this was no diffent, as Pete somehow managed to sort himself out.
The van straightened out and headed towards them, and Chris looked to the students.
“Okay, we have to do this quick. Jim, how are you doing?”
“I'm fine,” Jim replied, holding on to Claire for stability.
“Good. When he stops the van and gets the doors open, be ready to jump inside. Right?”
“Um, Mr Idol?” Petra said.
“Yes, Petra?”
“It doesn't look like he's going to stop.”
Chris looked up, and knew immediately that something had gone wrong. The van was approaching fast, but it looked like it was wobbling slightly, as if Pete were no longer in control.
“Shit!” Chris shouted.
The van vaulted the curb and smashed through the small fence surrounding the garden. The students panicked and decided to get out of the way of the oncoming vehicle. Chris, however, was frozen to the spot. Suddenly, with the screech of brakes, the van skidded across the grass towards the open doorway. The grass was churned into mud as it went, and after a nightmarishly long skid, the vehicle stopped a metre or so short of the open doorway. The the demonic woman on the roof was sent flying towards the open doorway, directly into the house.
When she crossed the blessed line of protection that Sister Sarah had drawn across the doorway, she exploded like a water balloon, and a torrent of black, sulphuric sludge hit Chris so hard it knocked him off his feet.
“Jesus!” Ben exclaimed as he rushed over to help Chris up. The Idol brother wiped black gunk from his face and pointed to the doorway.
“P-Pete!” he choked out.
Everyone stared at the van sitting idle just away from their front step. The engine was still running, but the vehicle was rocking slightly from side to side. They couldn't see what was happening within, but the sounds of screaming were clear.
Claire Marie held her hand over her mouth. “Oh no. Oh, god no!”
***
Pete had just aligned the van how he wanted it when the boy reached in and, with a desperate effort, grabbed a small handful of his hair. He yelled out, but somehow managed to keep the steering wheel straight and his foot to the floor. As the van hurtled towards the house, Pete turned his head to face his assailant and felt the hair twist in his scalp. He gritted his teeth in pain. The boy was forcing his head through the hole in the windscreen, and he was screeching like a banshee. Above, Pete heard the sounds of something moving on the roof. He took his left hand off the wheel, placed it on the top of the boy’s head, and attempted to push him back out the way he came. The boy struggled, trying to twist his head to take a bite out of Pete’s arm, but the Idol brother stood firm.
“Just fuck the fuck off, will you!” Pete grimaced, pushing harder on the boy’s head. He felt if give way slightly, the skin and bone softer than he expected.
Suddenly, another blistered and mutated arm appeared through the smashed window, grasping at the air just above Pete’s face. Pete yelped as the creature tried to scratch his face off with its long, yellow nails. It blindly swung its claws in around before finally finding something to grab.
Pete felt a sudden, blinding pain in his right arm as her claws found purchase in the leather of his jacket, and more unfortunately, his flesh. He briefly released the steering wheel and the van immediately wobbled and wavered in the road. Suddenly he felt a heavy bump as the vehicle met the kerb at speed.
They were almost at the house.
The sudden bump forced his roof attacker to release its grip, and the arm disappeared back from whence it came. He quickly grabbed the steering wheel and forced the van to right itself as best he could.
Pete felt another shudder as they smashed through the gate leading on to the front garden.
How big is the front garden again? He thought to himself briefly, before taking his foot from the accelerator and slamming it down on the brake pedal. He could see the lights of the front doorway getting brighter through the partially smashed back window, but not much else. He felt the car skidding in the dirt, and in a split second more thoughts ran through his mind simultaneously.
Please god let these brakes work.
My arm is killing me.
I hope I don't smash into the house.
Let go of my hair you little bastard.
The car stopped suddenly as the tyres gripped the mud, and Pete heard the metal roof buckle as something moved again on it. The boy Pete’s hair (taking some of it with him) but now his whole torso was now in the van, and he was screaming bloody murder directly into Pete’s face.
Pete smelt sulphuric bile from the child’s open mouth, and he couldn't help but scream back. He gripped the boy’s wrists with both hands to avoid being torn to shreds, but he still had to avoid the demon’s jaws. He stood up on the driver’s seat and stamped down hard on the top of the boy’s head.
Something crunched, as the boy fell back out of the van. Pete dropped into the cab, landing on one of the supply bags they had brought with them.
The manic chirping of the budgie in its cage filled the van, like a feathered alarm bell. Pete knew he had to act quickly.
After tossing a few boxes out of the way, he found what he was looking for. Holding the shotgun in his hands, he searched around for ammunition. He checked back, and saw that the demonic boy was clawing back in through the hole in the windscreen. Its face was crushed and malformed, and was dripping black liquid. It looked at him with burning red eyes and screeched a gargled howl of anger.
He spotted one of the boxes of shotgun shells and reached for it. He opened it and pulled two shells from the box, when the van was suddenly rocked by the force of several people slamming into it at once. Pete tumbled to the side, dropping the shotgun shells to the floor of the cab.
The budgie chirped louder. An angry warning.
Pete stumbled back upright and looked back to the driver’s seat. The demonic boy was almost completely in the cab, and now there were others reaching in from the side windows. Other evil faces leaned in.
Fuck, Pete thought.
He was out of time.
***
Everyone watched in horror as more villagers arrived at the van. They slammed into the side of it with such force it rocked it on its axles. They were reaching into the cab like hungry animals, and those inside the house were powerless to stop them. Chris felt sick, and he knew it wasn't just because he’d just been crop-dusted by demonic guts.
“We have to do something!” Petra shouted.
Chris tapped Ben on the shoulder.
“Come with me,” he said, and both of them rushed to the kitchen.
Chris ran to the cupboard and began pulling out tin cans. If ther
e was one thing that students were guaranteed to have in their cupboards, it was extra value beans and soup. He passed a load to Benjamin before taking a few for himself. They headed back out to the doorway.
“We can’t go past this salt line,” Chris said, as he handed out tins to the students. “But at this range, we shouldn't miss.”
He took a can of value beans, stepped back, and launched it at the small group of demons near the front of the van. He missed them completely.
“Shit,” he mumbled.
Before he could say anything else, Claire Marie had launched her own tin of produce. It caught one of them, a mutated gentleman in an ill-fitting football shirt, square in the side of the head. He growled, then spun to look directly at her.
“Bitch!” he gargled, before another can hit him square in the shoulder. That one was launched by Benjamin, and it did enough to distract the demon away from van.
His arms were longer than the others, and twisted, elongated fingers reached out and pointed at the students inside.
“When I get in there I'm going to make you suffer. Make you squeal like the sad pigs you are!”
He lumbered towards the back of the van, his eyes burning with the fires of Hell. Chris threw another tin of beans. The demonic hooligan snatched the can from the air with no effort at all, and then crushed it between the fingers of a gnarled looking fist. Tomato sauce and beans burst from the tin covering his shirt and hands, but he did not seem to care. He was instead smiling, black drool pouring from his broken lips.
As it reached the van, the back doors of the vehicle burst open and one of them caught the demon square in the face.
It was Pete, his hands, jacket and face splashed with black blood.
Chris looked at him with a huge sense of relief on his face, until he saw that behind him a small group of demons were almost inside the van.
“Change of plan!” Pete shouted, throwing the shotgun at Chris, who snatched it out of the air in one fluid motion. The butt of the rifle was sticky with black liquid and detritus.
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